


Always a Bad Idea

by Frea_O



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Hacking, Robots, Teamwork, Trick Arrows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson's pet team builds a robot. Why does nobody realize what a bad idea that is?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always a Bad Idea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nwhepcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/gifts).



Natasha had seen some pretty bad ideas—and more importantly, she’d seen the _results_ of some pretty bad ideas up close (standing in the smoking crater of Tony Stark’s dignity on the morning after his fateful birthday party usually came to mind at this point)—but this one took the cake. Mostly because it was Coulson. And Coulson, in her opinion, should know better.

Scratch that.

Coulson, in _everybody’s_ opinion, did know better.

“They were so excited,” he said over the comms. “What was I going to do, tell them not to pursue their scientific dreams?”

Clint cursed and twisted in midair to fire off a shot, hopping around like the damned acrobat that he was. “Yes!”

Natasha ducked under a photon blast—the little device was getting smarter, so it looked like the hacker’s algorithms for artificial intelligence were getting better—and shot a bolt at it from the Bite on her left wrist. She rolled out of the way of the return fire.

“I’d even go so far as to say _hell yes_ ,” Clint said. He rolled to safety and the robot swiveled to come after Natasha once more. “Robots are bad. Robots with AIs are bad. Robots made by bored geeks, I don’t care how cute they are, are bad.”

“You should know better,” Natasha said.

“They assured me it was—”

“You should know better,” Clint and Natasha chorused. 

There was a sigh as the robot changed course and tried to zap Natasha again. “I really should, shouldn’t I?”

“Have they figured out any weaknesses yet?” The robot wasn’t terribly large, but it could fly, it liked to zap things, and if the AI was advancing at the rate Natasha suspected, it wouldn’t be long before it went from being a Chicago Heights problem to an actual Chicago problem. They’d managed to lure it away from crowded areas and to a string of old abandoned warehouses, so Natasha was pretty positive that she was going to end up with asbestos poisoning and a tetanus shot out of this ordeal. She slid over some detritus from one of the robot’s first shots and zapped it a little with the Bite.

It hissed and tried to burn off her arm. It was fast, but she was faster.

“Fitz says it might like root beer floats?” Coulson said, and Natasha could hear the apology in his voice. “I do have to ask that you bring it back whole, or in as few pieces as possible. FitzSimmons and Skye have grown rather fond of their project.”

She and Clint exchanged a look and, as one, turned off their comm units. “Ideas?” Clint asked. 

“Blow it up. Do you think five hundred pieces is as few as possible?”

“Probably prefer fewer,” Clint said, and sprinting away, they ducked down, hiding from the robot together behind some crates. Natasha could hear the whirring noise of its repulsors as it searched for them. She ducked down, grabbing a back-up clip, and when she did, she caught the fleeting look on Clint’s face.

She groaned silently. “Oh, not you, too.”

“They must have put a lot of work into it.”

“The ‛it’ you’re referring to is currently trying to find us so it can slice us into little pieces.”

“But if we blow it up...well, I hate disappointing him, you know that.”

Natasha ran her hand over her face and muttered an expletive. “He should know better. But very well. Distract it.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“When will you learn to stop asking me that?” She holstered her Glock and clenched her left fist to change the charge on the Bite. She nodded at the top of the crates. “Give me a boost?”

“You could make that jump on your own and you know it.” He cupped his hands and without hesitation, she took a running leap, vaulting off of his hands and landing easily on top of the crate. The robot immediately whirled and aimed for her. It zoomed straight for her—until a burst of confetti exploded right beside it.

Natasha used the momentary distraction to leap straight for it. She caught the fingers of her right hand in the joint where its “head” met its torso and used that little bit of momentum to swing herself around the robot. In an instant, she had her legs wrapped around its torso. She’d spotted the little monitor on the back of its “neck” when they had first landed. Getting close had seemed like a bad idea.

Answering Coulson’s distress call had been a bad idea from the start. So had the fucking robot, actually. See? All bad ideas.

With her clinging to it, the robot went nuts, spinning around and trying to blast her at point-blank range. Another confetti arrow exploded, this time sending purple and silver pieces of paper all over the two of them.

Natasha spat out a purple streamer. “Do you have _anything_ else in your quiver, dammit? This is not a party!”

“Olé!” was the smartass reply.

“First I’m going to dismantle the robot, then I’m going to dismantle you,” Natasha said under her breath. The little monitor had a keyboard, which was difficult to maneuver while riding a lethal robot around like a bucking bull, but she held tight with her legs and typed furiously.

The next arrow Clint shot didn’t have confetti in it, though it did arc around and have the robot—and Natasha by default—chasing after it, straight at Clint. She saw his eyes widen before he snatched the arrow from the air and dived out of the way.

“What the hell was that?” she said, looking back at the monitor as the robot chased him around.

“Boomerang arrow!”

“You realize boomerangs _come back to you_ , don’t you?”

“I’m getting that now!”

“Why do you even have that arrow?”

“Boomerangs!”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Natasha said as she finally accessed the robot’s operating system and began to type faster, “my partner.”

“I heard that.” Clint rolled out of the way and shot off a sparkler arrow that made the robot change course abruptly, nearly dislodging Natasha. She gritted her teeth. “And you should learn to respect the arrows, you know. They’re part of the Hawkeye experience.”

“Can they be part of the ‛dealing with the robot’ experience now, please?” She missed a keystroke and cursed as the robot began to shake with something akin to rage. She really, really hated robots. And robot prosthetic suits with idiots inside them, and robots with AIs, and Coulson’s little team thinking they had come up with the next gen robot tech, and just robots in general, really. A human, she could manipulate. Robots were a different level.

“Nat?” Clint asked as the robot turned again, shaking and speeding up. “It looks...angry. Definitely angry.”

He fired off a sparkler arrow. The robot didn’t even flinch. It was now heading straight for him. 

“I suggest running,” Natasha said as she typed away furiously to deal with the error. The robot seemed to have completely forgotten she was currently its passenger, as it was focused only on Clint, who shot arrow after arrow into the air, showering Natasha with glitter and confetti and temporarily blinding her with a flashbang. She saw the moment he ran out of trick arrows because the ‛oh crap!’ look on his face was like a siren that things were about to go very, very wrong.

“Ugh,” Natasha finally said, and hit her final keystroke. The robot shuddered and actually stopped, which she’d known it would do. And before it could reboot itself, she stuck her entire left fist into the depression in the back of its neck and unleashed the full force of the Bite.

The robot and Natasha clattered to the ground, the former seizing in some kind of electronic fit. Natasha rolled out of the way of an errant blast and sprang, yanking open the grate along its back. She ignored the wishes of Coulson and his team and yanked out a handful of wiring.

Abruptly, the robot shuddered and shut down.

Clint, looking wary and with an arrow nocked, strode up. “I thought we weren’t supposed to break it.”

“He said as few pieces as possible. It’s not five hundred pieces, he should be happy.” Natasha sat back and wiped at the sweat on her brow.

Clint finally relaxed the string and kicked their foe. “I hate robots.”

“Always a bad idea,” Natasha said, nodding.


End file.
